1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to electrical lighting, and more particularly concerns ornamental outdoor or indoor lighting for trees.
2. Description of Related Art
Adequate artificial lighting of garden or courtyard areas, poolside areas and walkways can be important for preventing accidents and providing tasteful or even artistic night landscape displays. Individual lights or strings of lights are commonly arranged loosely on branches or hangers attached to a tree such as by screws or nails, string or cord. Spot lights are also often securely mounted on the ground, directed upwardly to illuminate trees and structures from various angles, or can be affixed to a tree to illuminate discrete areas of the tree or around the tree. Full illumination of the tree can be achieved by wrapping a string of lights around a tree trunk and branches, but does not generally provide good area lighting around the tree, and can be degraded by exposure to the elements. To achieve wide area lighting around trees with spot lighting requires multiple spot lights with widely overlapping areas of illumination arranged around the tree, which can result in a high consumption of electrical power to provide suitable area lighting around a tree.
It is desirable to provide a circular lamp and lighting assembly lighting for trees and area lighting around trees that can be arranged in a circular configuration around a tree, without the need for overlapping of individual areas of illumination as is required by spot lighting, and with lower power consumption than is typically required by spot lighting. It would also be desirable to provide an adjustable bracket to allow the circular lamp and lighting assembly to be easily adjusted to accommodate a range of tree diameters. The present invention meets these needs.